Robert de Niro is like a wine that gets better with age. From The Godfather 2 to Meet the Fockers, he has shown time and time again his versatility and wide range as an actor.

In Nancy Meyers’ latest office comedy, The Intern, he once again displays another virtuoso-level performance playing Ben Whittaker, a 70-year-old senior citizen who is retired but feels the urge to fill the hollowness in his life by returning back to work.

De Niro introduces another side of his acting abilities in Whittaker.

The two-time Academy Award winner, in his later years, has flirted with comedies while at the same time maintaining the tough guy and grumpy persona of the characters he played in his younger years.

With The Intern, however, we are introduced to a brand new side of De Niro that is charmingly sweet, warm and lovable.

Right from the start, De Niro makes us fall in love with Whittaker as we see him presenting a monologue about his life, from the recent death of his wife to the boring life of retirement after more than 4 decades hustling in the corporate world.

The monologue, as it turns out, is a video application letter from Whittaker for a senior citizen internship program at About The Fit, an online fashion retail startup company owned by Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway).

Whittaker’s charm in his application is more than enough to win the hearts of the young and hip talent recruiters working at About The Fit.

He gets the internship job, and while he has more than 40 years experience in business, he remains humble and shows great tenacity in learning about the e-commerce world from his much younger peers.

Whittaker’s humility easily wins him a lot of respect and affection from the young crowd at About The Fit. Ostin, however, does not immediately embrace the new intern.

Robert de Niro (left) stars in the new comedy The Intern alongside Anne Hathaway.(Warner Bros)

Ostin, who founded the startup from her kitchen and managed to make it an overnight success story, has a hard time believing in the concept that bringing in experience like Whittaker will help her develop the business even further.

As the story develops, Whittaker manages to slowly gain Ostin’s trust. Whittaker shows that although he may not be familiar with the concept of social media, digital branding and even “googling”, his vast experience in business helps the employees at About The Fit do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. And Whittaker and Ostin develop a deep friendship despite the generation gap between them.

Ostin, who is also a mom and the wife of a stay-at-home dad, is a woman who is fierce and tough on the outside, but deep and sensitive on the inside, and sometimes she just needs to have someone to speak to about her problems. She finds that someone in Whittaker, a chivalrous gentleman from an era that seems long gone.

The chemistry between Whittaker and Ostin feels very genuine and believable.

The performances of Hathaway and De Niro are basically what save The Intern from ending up as a shallow, flat-plotted soap opera.

It is ironic that while The Intern tries to show how a retiree can find new excitements in his later life, it also delivers its story at a pace and tempo that reminds us of the boring reality of retired life.

The Intern practically has no major conflict throughout its narrative. There are a couple of bumpy roads along About the Fit’s journey as an emerging startup, but they get solved easily without contributing much spice to the movie.

When it comes to the personal struggles within the characters, we can only find the ones that are relatable enough to our daily lives in the final third of the movie.

Meyers wraps up these flat and boring narratives in glitzy and glamorous settings — from mesmerizing kitchen sets to people dressed up in designer suits.

But thankfully, because of De Niro and Hathaway, the flat script is somehow saved and is at least imbued with some soul.

The Intern may not rank as one of the greatest movies in the careers of either De Niro or Hathaway, but it is one that demonstrates that the best actors and actresses operating in the world really can save the proverbial day.

JoJo Kushner (left) <)